Every Mother’s Day America takes time to salute and celebrate motherhood. But we are not alone. According to the website finance.yahoo.com., there are 2.2 billion mothers around the world right now, and Mother’s Day is celebrated in 100 countries. There are around 85 million mothers living in the United States right now. In 2022, 84% of Americans said they would celebrate Mother’s Day in some way, and planned to spend $31.7 billion on Mother’s Day-related gifts. In addition, Mother’s Day accounts for 26% of all holiday purchases at flower shops, while Valentine’s Day accounts for 30% and Christmas / Hanukkah 26. According to the Greeting Card Association, Americans purchase an incredible 113 million cards for Mother’s Day every year. There’s a lot of talk these days about how we need to empower women in our culture. But the information just noted (and plenty more could be said) makes it clear moms who are real moms already occupy a unique place of prominence and a unique and lasting power in our lives!
When we highlight the unique power of a mother, we are not diminishing Dad’s role in his children’s lives. He makes his own vital impact on his children by being a dad. Many Americans have accepted the preposterous redefinition of marriage to include “same-sex marriage” unions. It may now be legal, but nobody, including the Supreme Court of the United Sates, will ever be able by decree to make reproduction be by “same-sex.” The same God who created them “male and female” (Genesis 1:26-28 *
Matthew 19:4-6) decreed women would “bear children” (1 Timothy 5:14). Even in our age of high tech’ approach to reproduction, it still takes a male and female to make a baby. Always has, always will. Liberal judges and activist courts can’t change those facts any more than they can decree the sun to be the moon or vice versa.
All that being said, let us acknowledge the special and unique bond a mother has with her child / children. The physical cord that connected them when the child was yet unborn gives way to an emotional bond of love that is never severed. As has been said, “To be a mother is to go through life with your heart outside your body.” The Bible hints at that bond in Proverbs 4:3 – “When I was my father’s son, tender and the only one in the sight of my mother.” When God promised not to forget His people in Jerusalem, He inspired the prophet Isaiah to refer to the powerful and enduring force of a mother’s genuine love — “Can a woman forget her child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb …” (Isaiah 49:15)? Sadly, some women do, but the prophet’s illustration makes sense because of how abnormal and unthinkable it is that a mother would forget her own child. In 1 Thessalonians 2:7 the apostle talks about how he loved the church in Thessalonica. When with them, he says he was gentle “just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.” Paul Faulkner talked about the power of a mother’s love. He wrote: “A nurse who had worked the front lines during a war told me that mortally wounded young men always cry out for their mothers. ‘I never heard them call for anyone else. It was always mother.’ ” Faulker continues, “In those great victories when the football hero crosses the line and smashes the football down and looks at the camera, what does he say? Hi, Mom!’ What power do mothers hold over these 265 pound behemoths?” (p 82, “Raising Faithful Kids in a Fast-Paced World”). Stay at it, Mom. A devoted mother is still a major force in her child / children’s lives.
Dan Gulley